Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 22 April 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Frank Daly:

Well, they may, but I would just base it on, sort of, first of all what we saw in terms of project analysis, in terms of analysis of concentration risk. I do not think any hedge fund or equity partner would go in and partner with some of the developers and particularly in some of the large-scale lending without doing an absolute, deep dive into the financial situation of the developer, into the project feasibility, into the valuation of assets because there is certainly ... One of the things that did surprise me is that in many cases, the valuation of assets which the banks took was actually provided by the debtor. There is nothing sort of fundamentally wrong with that provided you do actually verify it and test it independently. I do not think a hedge fund would actually have gone in without that type of analysis. I think the other thing that a hedge fund or an equity partner will do is they will probably have rights to step in along the way. They will have rights to actually keep intruding into the project or into what the money is being used for and how it is being spent and they would be all over you, to put it that way.